Wednesday, 8 November 2023
The Amazing Race 35, Episode 6
Jaipur (India) - Frankfurt (Germany) - Burg Rheinstein (Germany) - Cologne (Germany)
[Castles and wine terraces above the Rhine River.]
The 49-Euro “Deutschland-Ticket” for travel in Germany
Germany has long been known for its roads and cars. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s experience with the German Reichsautobahnen during his time as commanding general of allied forced in Europe during World War 2 was a major inspiration for his later initiative as U.S. Preisdent for the construction of the U.S. system of limited access, divided, high-speed interstate and defense highways. Germany remains a major center of automotive design and engineering, even though more of the cars sold under German brand names are now made in cheaper-labor countries than in Germany. German car culture provides an interesting fun-house mirror through which to observe and think about U.S. car culture and its differences.
So it may have seemed natural for the producers of The Amazing Race to have the cast members drive themselves from Frankfurt Airport to the Burg Rheinstein castle on the Rhine River, and from there to Cologne.
But that was certainly not the only option, and probably not the best one, if you want to make that trip yourself.
Having to concentrate on driving and navigating kept the racers from enjoying the scenery. And their tasks were made harder by their having started driving immediately after an overnight long-haul flight in cramped economy-class seats, crossing 4 1/2 time zones (Indian time is in between two standard hourly time zones) from a country where they drive on the left side of the road to one where they drive on the right. All of these are counter-indications for trying to start driving right away. Better to wait a day and get a good night’s rest after a flight like this, if possible, or to get on a train, than to pick up a rental car at the airport as soon as you arrive.
Culture shock can be as severe going from the Third World to the First World as vice versa. Remembering how disoriented and jetlagged I was the first day after flying non-stop from India to Europe, I’m not surprised that the pairs of racers were unusually irritable with each other and kept making mistakes.
The TV producers had alternatives. If you think that a private car is the only way to explore the countryside or get away from big cities, think again. The Rhine River gorge is a World Heritage Site and major tourist destination accessible by many means. You can get to Burg Rheinstein by train, river boat, bicycle, or a combination of these modes of transport.
[Burg Rheinstein up the steep slope above the railroad embankment as seen from the bike path and ferry landing at river kilometer 533 — almost exactly the midpoint of the Rhine.]
Both the autobahn and the high-speed Inter-City Express (ICE) rail line between Frankfurt and Cologne (the most important junction between the rail systems of Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands) bypass the twisting Middle Rhine gorge. But there are very comfortable — and slower, so you get a better view of the scenery — local passenger trains that follow the water-level route through the gorge. There are station stops at Trechtinghausen, 2.6 km (1.6 miles) downriver from Burg Rheinstein and at Bingen, 5 km (3.1 miles) upriver. It’s a shorter walk to the castle from Trechtinghausen, but Bingen is a larger town with more frequent trains and more lodging and other services.
There’s a dock on the river immediately below the castle served by numerous cruise boats and by scheduled ferries that operate through the gorge between Bingen and Ruedesheim.
[Railroad, motor road, and bike path along the Rhine.]
There’s a bike path, almost entirely separated from motorized traffic, all the way through the gorge on the west bank. It’s one of the most popular sections of EuroVelo 15, a marked through cycle-touring route along the Rhine (for much of its length with alternate routes on either bank) from its source in Switzerland to its mouth at Rotterdam.
When some the teams on The Amazing Race 35 get lost and stop for directions, they meet a group of fairly typical German e-bike tourists relaxing beside the river.
[Racers ask for directions from e-bike tourists along the Rhine. Screenshot from The Amazing Race on CBS-TV.]
As along the Danube, there’s a complete range of services available for bicycle tourism along the Rhine, especially through this marquee scenic stretch, including certified bike-friendly hotels and guesthouses, bike and e-bike rental, e-bike charging stations, luggage transport services (so you only need to carry what you need during the day with you on your bike), and restaurants and beer gardens along the bike path.
I’ve ridden this route past Burg Rheinstein twice, in 2014 and 2018, as part of longer bike trips in Germany and neighboring countries. It’s about 250 km (155 miles) by bike from Frankfurt to Cologne. That’s three or four days journey at the typical pace of a German cycle tourist.
[Along the Main River, leaving Frankfurt for the Rhine Valley and Cologne. The skyline of Frankfurt has grown rapidly with the expansion of the European Central Bank and the Euro zone, and the relocation of many banks and financial service companies from London after Brexit.]
My partner and I took four leisurely days from Frankfurt to Cologne, with stops and sightseeing, but many people could do it in just two days, with a stop in the middle near Burg Rheinstein, if you were in a hurry. There’s a campground between Trechtinghausen and Burg Rheinstein, or a variety of lodging in Bingen.
If you don’t want to ride that far, you could get on a local train, with your bike, for part of the distance.
(Along the way downriver, if you are interested in somewhat more recent history, I especially recommend the small Peace Museum inside the still-standing west tower of the former Rhine bridge at Remagen, between Koblenz and Bonn.)
[Stained glass, Cologne Cathedral.]
By not putting the racers on a local train, The Amazing Race 35 missed its chance to play up an important but poorly understood development for travellers in Germany: the new Deutschland-Ticket introduced in May 2023:
What is a Deutschland-Ticket?
For 49 Euros (currently about US$53), a Deutschland-Ticket gets you unlimited travel for a calendar month on local and regional trains and all forms of mass transit (subways, streetcars, local buses, etc.) throughout Germany.
That sounds great, and it is — for some travellers. But it’s not as good, or as simple, as you might think, and it’s not for everyone.
To understand the complications and limitations of the Deutschland-Ticket, it helps to start by understanding what it’s intended to be: the Deutschland-Ticket is a monthly mass-transit pass for commuters and/or people without cars who rely on local public transportation.
The Deutschland-Ticket is intended primarily for commuting and local transit. It can be used for long-distance travel (on slow local trains that make many stops) and by foreigners including tourists. But it isn’t intended for long-distance travel, or for tourists, and the rules and ticket sales procedures reflect this.
The Deutschland-Ticket was established and is subsidized by the national government of Germany, but tickets are sold (at a price fixed by the national government) and transportation services are provided by railroads and local and regional transit operators throughout the country. In this, it has some aspects in common with Eurailpasses, which are sold at standardized prices fixed by a consortium of European railroads, but which allow for travel on trains operated by any of those national and regional railroads.
The Deutschland-Ticket evolved out of existing monthly commuter-train and transit passes and a convergence of pricing experiments to get people back on empty trains and buses after the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Green Party and environmentalist pressure for incentives to get people out of cars and onto mass transit, and support from Left and socialist parties and representatives of rural regions for transportation equity measures measures to mitigate the high cost of commuting and transportation for working-class residents of outer suburbs and rural areas. The pattern isn’t as extreme in Germany as in Paris or London, but only wealthier people can afford to live close to the centers of gentrified German cities or high-speed rail stations, while poorer people live in progressively more distant suburbs and have more time-consuming and expensive commutes that have often cost much more than €49 a month. Rural poverty is increasing in parts of German, including a growing number of elderly (often transit-dependent) rural Germans living in poverty.
The Deutschland-Ticket might have been designed to also promote a post-pandemic recovery of international tourism to Germany, but it wasn’t. Any usefulness or benefit for foreign tourists or long-distance travellers is, at least to date, an unintended side effect.
Since the price of the Deutschland-Ticket is, by design and intention, less than what many commuters and transit passengers were paying (or would still pay if they kept using other types of tickets), railroad and transit companies have little reason to promote it or make it easy to buy. Already these companies are lobbying to raise the price of the Deutschland-Ticket.
How can I buy a Deutschland-Ticket?
Since the Deutschland-Ticket is designed as a commuter or transit pass, it is available only by subscription with automatic recurring monthly payments.
You can buy a Deutschland-Ticket for only a single month, but you have to sign up for an open-ended subscription and authorize automatic monthly charges, then cancel your subscription before you are charged for the next month beyond what you want.
Most companies require you to set up your Deutschland-Ticket subscription and pay for your first month (which might end up being your only month) by the 10th or 20th of the month before you want your subscription to start, and cancel your subscription by the 10th or 20th of the month to avoid being charged for the following month. So if you want a Deutschland-Ticket for the month of March only, you may need to sign up for a subscription and pay your €49 for March by the 10th of February, and cancel your subscription by the 10th of March to avoid being charged another €49 for April.
A Deutschland-Ticket is typically issued as a QR code you can display in a smartphone app. Save the code on your phone as a screenshot so that you can still show it to a ticket inspector even if you don’t have a cellphone signal. High-speed trains in Germany often have onboard wi-fi, but the local trains on which the Deutschland-Ticket is valid more often don’t.
Be sure to keep the e-mail message confirming your subscription, since you might need it to cancel your subscription, especially if your phone is lost, stolen, or damaged.
In theory you can get a Deutschland-Ticket on a credit-card sized “chipcard” like those used for transit fares in many cities, but the need to have the card mailed to a German address, and to predict and time its issuance and arrival is likely to make it hard for foreign tourists to avail themselves of this option. That’s too bad, since I’d much rather have my ticket on a separate card than on my phone, to minimize having to expose my phone to snatch-thieves on trains and buses and in stations. If anyone has succeeded in buying a Deutschland-Ticket on a chipcard from overseas, and having the card sent to a hotel in Germany to be waiting for them and valid for use on arrival, let me know how you did it and how it worked out.
Where can I buy a Deutschland-Ticket?
You can buy a Deutschland-Ticket over the counter at some ticket offices, but the requirement to start your subscription the month before you first want to use it makes this impractical for most tourists. Most tourists will buy it online or through a smarthphone app.
While the price for a Deutschland-Ticket is the same regardless of which railroad or transit company you buy it from, the procedures and deadlines for subscribing and canceling your subscription vary. Some of these companies’ Web sites and apps won’t accept payments from credit cards or non-European bank accounts, or won’t accept IBANs from countries other than Germany or billing addresses without German postcodes. Since a Deutschland-Ticket is valid for all of the same services throughout Germany regardless of which national, regional, or local rail or transit company you buy it from, you can make your purchase from whichever company makes it easiest to start, pay for, and later cancel your subscription.
I’ve seen a variety of recommendations for which national and regional railroads and transit companies make Deutschland-Ticket purchasing easiest for foreigners, including:
Regardless of where and how you set up a Deutschland-Ticket subscription, you’ll probably need to provide an address in Germany. Don’t let this put you off. You don’t have to be a resident of Germany to be eligible for a Deutschland-Ticket, and the address you provide doesn’t have to be your permanent address or match your billing address. It’s probably easiest to provide the address of some hotel you might stay at, so you have the right format and a valid postcode for an address in Germany, but it doesn’t matter if you never actually stay there.
I would probably buy my Deutschland-Ticket from Deutsche Bahn, since I’d want the Deutsche Bahn app on my phone anyway as the best source of schedule and route information for trains throughout Germany. Buying your Deutschland-Ticket from DB also means that if you have a problem with your ticket, you can get help from the staff at a DB ticket office anywhere in Germany. (Staff at ticket offices in smaller cities may be less comfortable in English, but more patient with foreigners.) Deutsche Bahn only accepts payment for a Deutschland-Ticket subscription by direct debit from a European bank account with an International Bank Account Number (IBAN), not by credit or debit card. Don’t let that stop you: You can get a legitimate Euro-denominated bank account with an IBAN for free by signing up for a Wise account, which has many other additional uses and advantages.
If you don’t have or want to bother to get a Wise account or IBAN number, all of the other Deutschland-Ticket sellers listed above reportedly accept at least some foreign-issued credit or debit cards and billing addresses, although that could change. But you’ll have to deal with that company, probably online or by phone if you are in a different part of the country, if you have any problems using your ticket or cancelling your subscription.
How do you travel with a Deutschland-Ticket?
Once you have a valid Deutschland-Ticket, you can just get on any U-Bahn, S-Bahn, train, local bus, or local train on which it is valid. In general, there are no turnstiles or ticket checks at German train and transit stations. But there are spot checks by roving teams of inspectors, roving, and you are caught without a valid ticket, you will be assessed a fine or “penalty fare” of at least €60 (US$65).
No reservations are needed or possible for any such train. If a train allows or requires reservations, it’s some sort of express train for which a Deutschland-Ticket isn’t valid. You can take any unoccupied 2nd-class seat on a local train. Be careful: Even some local trains have 1st-class sections. No upgrades to 1st class are possible with a Deutschland-Ticket.
In the Deutsche Bahn travel planner, choosing “Mode of transport: Local transport only” is as close as you can get to searching only for trains on which a Deutschland-Ticket is valid. There’s not a lot of incentive for DB or any other company to offer a more accurate search for Deutschland-Ticket routes, since they can’t make any money on individual tickets or reservations for Deutschland-Ticket subscribers.
Most local or regional trains for which a Deutschland-Ticket is valid have train numbers starting with RB, RE, or IRE. You generally can’t use a Deutschland-Ticket on any train with an ICE, IC, or EC train number, or on Euro-Night or any other sleeping-car trains. A Deutschland-Ticket is valid on almost all local public transit systems and vehicles of all types, but not on private ferries or buses including the Flix Bus network, the European counterpart of Greyhound.
When is a Deutschland-Ticket likely to be a good deal?
A Deutschland-Ticket is most likely to be a good value for you if you spending at least a couple of weeks in Germany and are (a) making at least one daily round-trip by public transit and/or (b) visiting many places, making frequent short stopovers, and/or making many unplanned short trips.
If you are getting around the city and perhaps also taking day trips and excursions primarily by public transit, you could easily spend several times the price of a Deutschland-Ticket in a month in Berlin, Munich, or another big city in Germany. Using a Deutschland-Ticket also allows you to stay in outlying neighborhoods or towns where accommodations might be cheaper than in the city center, without increasing your transportation cost (although at the expense of more time on trains and buses if you are visiting sites downtown).
When it comes to tickets for long-distance trains, you can get any two out of three of fast, flexible, and cheap. The Deutschland-Ticket is the cheap and flexible option. It isn’t fast, but if you are stopping often anyway and taking a lot of short rides, that may not matter.
For the cheap and fast but not flexible option, if you can fix your itinerary at least a couple of months in advance, and will be visiting several far-apart cities, it will probably be worth paying for nonrefundable advance-purchase fixed-date tickets on high-speed trains for faster, more comfortable journeys on the longer legs, even if you also get a Deutschland-Ticket for urban transit and shorter legs.
Most Germans only buy train tickets a few weeks or less in advance. If you buy your tickets further in advance than most domestic travellers, you can find tickets as cheap as €18 (US$20) in 2nd class, or €27 (US$29) in 1st class (!), for a six-hour trip by direct ICE train between Hamburg and Munich, the most distant points on the German high-speed rail network. The same journey on local trains on which a Deutschland-Ticket is valid would take twice as long and require at least four changes of trains.
The fast and flexible option isn’t cheap: a one-way 2nd-class ICE ticket for travel tomorrow on that same route from Hamburg to Munich would cost €172 (US$184). A Eurail German Rail Pass for 15 days of travel within a 30-day period costs US$537 in high season, US$484 in low season. That pass covers 2nd-class travel on all trains, including high-speed ICE trains, but not seat reservation fees (ICEs are all-reserved trains) or travel on urban mass transit systems.
Can you take your bike with you on the train with a Deutschland-Ticket?
Almost all local trains in Germany have spaces for bicycles, and a Deutschland-Ticket could be useful to get to and from the start of a bike trip, to travel with your bike between cities or regions, to fill in gaps between sections you want to ride, and/or as your “sag wagon” if you get tired, have mechanical problems, or don’t feel like riding further in rain, on bad roads, or in bad traffic.
The problem is that any applicable charges for bringing a bike with you on the train are not covered by a Deutschland-Ticket, and those charges vary widely between regional rail and transit operators. On some local trains, you can bring a bike for no additional charge. On others, you need some sort of daily, weekly, monthly, or per-trip bike ticket. Some regional rail companies offer monthly bicycle add-ons to Deutschland-Ticket subscriptions, but each of those of those current bicycle subscription add-ons is limited to travel within one region of Germany.
The German bicycling club and advocacy organization ADFC has been lobbying for bicycles to be allowed without additional fare on all trains on which a Deutschland-Ticket is valid and on which bicycles are allowed. I suspect that won’t happen, but that a national monthly bicycle add-on to the basic Deutschland-Ticket subscription will be created.
There’s no easy way to tell whether a bike ticket is required to bring your bike with you on a specific train. Many German train stations, especially along local routes, are unstaffed. Sometimes you can buy a bike ticket from an automated kiosk or an app, but which one? How? And will that function of the kiosk or app be available in English? or will it be an “advanced” function available only in German?
If there’s a spot check for tickets, bike tickets will also be checked — I’ve seen it happen. If a bike ticket is required, and you don’t have one, you’ll be assessed a penalty fare for your bicycle just as you would if you didn’t have a ticket for yourself.
Link | Posted by Edward on Wednesday, 8 November 2023, 23:59 (11:59 PM)
